


Wired That Way

by CuriosityRedux



Series: Dragon Drabbles AU's [15]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Cyborg Astrid AU, F/M, Hiccstrid - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-01 05:42:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16759069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriosityRedux/pseuds/CuriosityRedux
Summary: Astrid Hofferson was a gold-medal olympian and America's sweetheart. That was, until a crippling accident left her with shattered bones, failing organs, and just enough luck to live. Hiccup is a cybernetics prodigy that's just been hired by the most advanced hospital in the country. His challenge? Make Astrid Hofferson whole again.





	1. File A (Set Up)

**Wired That Way**

****

_Art credit to Australet789 of Tumblr_

**File A (Set Up)**

**-**

**Anonymous asked: Are you gonna do anything at all with that cyberpunk!AU? At all? Because it looks like it would be awesome.**

It actually really floats my boat. I seriously dig it. 

So what I picture might sound totally dumb, but if you want to give her a cybernetic body, you gotta have a reason she needs it. I see Astrid as like this olympic-level athlete, probably a gymnast (something less team-involved) on the fast track to being a gold medalist. Then she suffers some traumatic accident, maybe a car accident, ooh maybe a fall. Her brain and a lot of her vital organs are still viable, so her parents sign her up for an experimental cybermechatronics program. She wakes up paralyzed, wrapped in bandages, with a scrawny guy her age shining a light into her eyes. 

“Ocular responses look good,” he says with a crooked grin. Leaning back, he presses his hands into her bedside and takes what sounds like a nervous breath. “Hi, Astrid. I’m, uh. I’m Hiccup Haddock. I built you.”

Of course, she’s terrified. She can’t move, can’t speak, can’t even cry. He explains what’s happened, about her accident and how she’s been rebuilt with pseudoskin and a mostly metal skeleton. This strange teenage doctor in a wrinkled white coat tells her she’s been “turned off” for almost three months in a coma-like state. He tells her to think the words _manually boot cardiovascular system._ In her chest, she feels a strange lurch, and her lungs inflate with air, and all at once she realizes that she hasn’t taken a breath until this moment.

He goes one by one, talking her through the long list of systems both biological and mechanical that have to be turned on. When he reconnects her nervous system and she can all at once move, her first instinct is to scream. But it doesn’t begin in her throat as a large breath of air. She inhales, and then upon exhaling, hears static and loud feedback pass through her lips. Hiccup winces, notes the panic in her eyes. 

“It’s okay!” he insists, holding her shoulders down— even as she struggles and realizes she’s been restrained by cushioned metal cuffs. The young doctor stammers and stares at her with concerned green eyes, trying to get her to hold his gaze. “Astrid, it’s okay. Your vocal output box hasn’t been set up. Please— just— just take deep breaths.”

It takes her a long minute for the terror to fade, for her to stop struggling and gasping and relax under Hiccup’s warm hands. Warm— that’s the first thing she realizes. She can feel the heat of his palms through her hospital gown, feel his fingers pressing into the flesh of her upper arms. Now that she thinks about it, she can feel the weight of her body settled against the mattress, the thick cotton of her bed’s blankets on her legs and the tickle of her hair against her neck. The room is cold, the florescents bright, and she can hear a quiet din of noise muffled around her. She _feels_.

“Hey, good,” he nods, that dorky smile lighting up his face once more. He’s tall, but except for that, he could be any of the guys in her senior class. Nobody that should be working in a hospital. The warmth of his hands fades as he pulls back, and then he says, “Connect vocal output box to respiratory system.”

After a few more commands, something in her throat makes her hiccup. Her eyes flick to the doctor— also Hiccup— in nervous question, and he gives her an encouraging nod. He tells her to try talking, and after a few slurred attempts, her tongue and teeth and jaw and lips all sync together. She has so many questions, so many things to say, so many concerns about this body that he’s adjusting like cell phone settings. But once her voice comes back to her, she can’t think of a single specific thing she wants to say first. Hiccup waits patiently, expectantly, but she’s at a loss for words. Finally, she wets her lips and asks him to take off the restraints. 

He talks her through several more commands, and then someone else comes in the room. An older woman who introduces herself as her doctor, and Astrid wonders who Hiccup is then, if not her doctor. “Your cybernetics engineer,” she replies, and then the lanky, messy-haired guy gives her a sheepish wave. 

She doesn’t see him much after that. The doctor takes over then, checking her vitals, explaining how much damage her _real_ body took. Her parents come in, sob and hug her and ask her a thousand questions. For such a strange awakening, once Hiccup leaves the room, everything feels like a normal hospital. She’s thirsty, she’s cold, her hair feels like a greasy mess. Nurses in pastel scrubs keep coming in and out to take blood or give her pills in tiny plastic cups. She only catches a few more glimpses of Hiccup Haddock— across the room in a large physical therapy gymnasium, speaking down the hall to her doctor, coming out of an elevator dressed in jeans and a button-down. But every time she sees him, she thinks— _Hi, Astrid. I’m Hiccup Haddock. I built you._

Days pass. Weeks. She goes home, sees family and old friends, discovers that three months of her life has passed while she’s been… turned off. During the day, she catches up on everything she’s missed. Reading through news site after news site, asking questions about her coaches and competitors, noticing little changes like her mom’s hair length or her her friend’s new cast. And at night, she lies awake in bed, staring at her hand and wondering about the technology behind every tiny movement. How many screws must be in her body? Why can’t she feel them? What about wires and lubricant and electricity and microchips? What if she short circuits? Can she rust?

It’s hard to handle. She becomes reserved, bitterly watching her competitions from the stands. She throws herself back into training despite her doctor’s warnings, wanting to try and test her body. To see how long she can run, how fast. How much she can lift, how much she can take. And the more she realizes that she’s stronger, faster, better, the more she hates herself. Nothing’s _fair_ anymore— she hasn’t earned any of this speed or strength. She’ll never be able to compete again. All of the hard work she’s put in over the years means nothing now. She spirals into depression, sulking and laying around and spending hours in the gym trying to find the edge of her abilities. 

One day she’s in the kitchen with her dad, staring out the window at some kids playing in the street. She’s in her usual chair, hands shoved in her sweatshirt’s pockets and her feet propped up on the kitchen table. Her dad’s trying to figure out why the garbage disposal keeps making scary noises, but he’s failing miserably. Her gaze slides to the side, and she watches him lean over the sink and shake his head. Astrid stares. Feels her bionic lungs fill and empty with unnecessary air. Then she shoves her chair away from the table, crosses the room, shoves one hand down the drain and flips the disposal switch. 

Now. Hiccup Haddock is the youngest cybernetics engineer in his field, trying to navigate the sudden attention he’s receiving after his experience in installing his own leg was published in a medical journal. It’s unnerving, really. His father’s more proud of him than ever, all the friends who teased him for his nerdiness are suddenly fascinated by his work. When he’s signed on to the government’s hush-hush cybermechatronics project, he’s really not prepared for the responsibility he’s saddled with. He’s assigned a file. A female athlete with extensive and devastating injuries. He has to make her function again, essentially save her before her brain dies. He insists that this sort of thing would take years, that he can’t do this on the timeline they want with the technology he has. He’s an engineer, not a doctor— he doesn’t know enough about biology for this! But then he’s shown a video of a beautiful blonde gymnast laughing and fanning her sweaty face while a sports reporter interviews her. Astrid Hofferson, his first patient. 

The work is grueling. Challenging. Frustrating. He thinks about quitting several times, but every time he does, he pulls up that video on his phone and watches the girl smile. He swears that he’s going to fix her. Rebuild her. Make her smile again. So he works day and night, and with the help of an entire team of surgeons and scientists, he replaces shattered bones with metal rods and trades arteries and veins for gelatin-based tubing. He builds functioning organs to take the place of those she lost, replaces patches of skin and flesh with a hyper-realistic pseudoskin a little bit at a time. It’s all he thinks about, all he can do. He works around the clock, experimenting, rebuilding, forging and installing. Other seventeen year-olds are getting ready for prom. He’s putting a person back together. 

The day he’s scheduled to reboot her, he’s so nervous he can hardly think straight. He runs through his checklist, making sure the microphones installed in her inner ears are turned on and transmitting basic commands. And then when her eyelids lift and he sees her bionic eyes stare up at him, his knees feel like they might give out. He takes her through her systems start-ups, sneaking glances at her face and realizing how strange it is that she looks exactly the same but so different. And then he reconnects her nervous system and she panics. Struggles. Tries to speak or scream and thrashes against her restraints. The fear in her face is so acute, so real, that he’s all at once struck with the thought that maybe he’s done something awful. Maybe he should have explained better before connecting her nervous system, maybe he should have reconnected it first. Maybe he should have brought her parents in the room despite the director’s suggestion, maybe he shouldn’t have gotten involved at all. 

But then she goes still, panting and giving him bursts of static that he thinks might be whimpers. It’s strange— they keep each others’ gazes as she calms, both staring at one another in nervous shock. He never noticed her eyelashes. It’s such a weird thing to think, when he has ten thousand other things on his brain, but her eyelashes are thick and long and gold. They flutter whenever she blinks. After a few moments, he can feel her relaxing under his hands, but his heart’s still racing. He immediately tries to get her vocal systems operating to help soothe her anxiety. She’s shaky, trembling, hands flexing and fisting. Even after they finish her reboot and his boss comes in to take over, she keeps glancing at him. In curiosity? In fear? Is that distaste in the way she’s looking at him? Or is she trying to reach out for comfort again?

It’s shocking how little he sees her after her reboot. Suddenly there’s so much paperwork on his desk, so many demands for reports and diagrams and blueprints. He hears about her progress every day, receives daily updates on her data. But they never get another conversation, and he never lays a hand on her again. 

It’s strange. For months, his life has been about prostheses and frames and skeletons and systems. And now his project— his patient— is gone. He shouldn’t feel as dissatisfied as he does, as unfulfilled. Something’s missing, some large piece of a puzzle. Like the phantom pains that still haunt him at night after he takes off his leg— he can feel the appendage and experience the pain but not ease it. That’s how it is, knowing something’s wrong but not even knowing what there is to fix. 

And he never got to see her smile.

His workload goes back to installing basic cybernetic prostheses. He checks in with his team occasionally, trying to see if anyone’s heard anything from the Hofferson family. But for the most part, he’s bored and apathetic. He’s distracted and antsy, though he can’t explain why. Then one day he gets an emergency call to come into the lab. He runs in wearing an old faded tee and a pair of jeans covered in pen doodles, expecting to find disaster and chaos. But there’s just one nurse in his lab, holding a clipboard to her chest. And at one of his work tables, cradling a bandaged arm against her stomach and flipping through sketches and schematics, is Astrid Hofferson. 


	2. File B

**File B**

**-**

“A garbage disposal,” he echoed weakly, untangling the gauze wrapped around her wrist. The torn metal and stripped wires stuck to the fabric, leaving tufts of cotton behind. “I’m uh— I’m guessing you didn’t drop your keys down the drain?”

“I wanted to see if it would hurt,” she answered too casually, her eyes on the frayed machinery protruding from her forearm. It was so strange, having her here. Sitting in his lab in jeans and a t-shirt, eyes blue, hair up, a pair of ear buds around her neck. Her pseudoskin was warm where he lightly touched her, and she kicked her foot against her lab stool absently. 

He was awkward and uncomfortable at first. Trying to reintroduce himself, but she’d recalled his name without a moment’s hesitation. Whether that was a side effect of her cyber tweaks or because she actually remembered him, that was yet to be seen. The lab assistant informed him that she’d been involved in an “accident” and then disappeared. Left him standing next to the girl he’d built with no social experience to speak of.

“Did it?” It was different, holding her wrist and inspecting her mechanics while she was awake and watching and responding. 

“For a minute.”

 _I bet_ , he thought. Her brain was programmed to receive all the same pains and pleasures that human nerve endings sent, but it probably maxed out after something like that. Hiccup glanced up at her face, trying to read her expression. When she felt his gaze and looked up, he coughed and blushed. 

“I’m going to have to open you up,” he informed her, clearing his throat of his embarrassment. “Replace your hand and some of these wires.”

“Shouldn’t you buy me dinner first?” Her tone was flat, her mouth quirked to the side in something like annoyance. 

Hiccup felt heat rise to his cheeks. “I can have someone bring you something, if you’re hungry. I don’t— I’m not going to do anything inappropriate, I just have to peel back some of your skin to fix you.”

One slender blonde brow shot up, and she stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Of course, _he_ was used to talking about body parts like they were as interchangeable as this week’s fashion, but to her it must’ve sounded Frankensteinish. 

“It won’t hurt!” he assured her, drowning in his own pitiful conversational skills. “I’ll disconnect your neural receptors so you won’t feel a thing.”

Her gaze, if anything, only turned more alarmed, sharpening with a hint of aggravation. “Good to know.”

He exhaled a sharp sigh and turned back to the remains of her hand. This wasn’t him. Sure, he wasn’t the smoothest guy in the lab, but he didn’t stammer and second-guess and make an idiot of himself either. It wasn’t like this when she was unconscious. He could talk to her all day when she was shut down, and often did, if no one else was around. While she was awake, it was so much more difficult. 

Unsure of himself, he pressed his mouth into a thin line and tried to ignore her critical stare. He pulled his tray of tools closer, fingers hovering as they searched, and then selected a scalpel. 

“I have to get close for a second,” he warned her, setting her forearm down gently and leaning in. His free hand moved to the back of her neck, feeling beneath her ponytail for the tiny crevice in her pseudoskin. When his nail caught it, he eased his finger into the groove and pulled back the flesh so he could reach her manual circuit board.

Hiccup heard her breath hitch at was likely an uncomfortable sensation, and he realized how close their faces were. Dropping his gaze to her shoulder, he swallowed and tried not to flush while his fingertips searched the pad for her neural switch. Once it was flipped, he was able to sit back against his own stool and take her arm again. 

“Sorry,” he muttered. Lining up the scalpel at the crook of her elbow, he made a clean slice down the center of her forearm. Her shocked little gasp made his hands want to shake, but years of practice kept them steady. Hiccup pulled back the edges of the pseudoskin so he could see into her arm, make out the extent of the damage she’d caused to herself. 

Astrid shut up quickly after he cut her open. Maybe it was the first time she was seeing inside her limbs that made her go silent, or maybe watching her body be cut up was just too weird for her. Her breathing started to tremble beneath them, sounding nervous and a little emotional. He flicked his eyes up to her, noticing that her cool apathy was gone. Her brow was crinkled, her jaw tight with something not unlike fear. It made his chest tighten, made guilt churn in the pit of his stomach. 

“It must feel bizarre,” he guessed, attempting to soothe her. “I probably should’ve taken things slower. I’m not exactly the best at bedside manner.”

“You’re inside me,” she stated a little dumbly. Her blonde lashes fluttered as she blinked and stared. 

What an… intimate choice of words. Hiccup had to resist the urge to snatch his fingers out of her wiring. There was a part of him— a part of his brain that lived deeper than the cybernetics prodigy on the surface— that gave him a suddenly completely different idea of being _inside_ her. The teenage boy in him. _That_ part of his brain abruptly supplied him with the mental image of her naked body— a sight he knew all too well— but wrapped around his for the first time.

Hiccup stood so quickly that the tweezers fell from his fingers and clattered on the tabletop. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head and gave himself the censure of the century. Astrid Hofferson was his patient. It was his job as her cybernetics engineer to know the ins and outs of her body, and it was his job to keep his thoughts completely clean. 

“Sorry,” he blurted when she looked up at him with confusion. “Wiring, um. Shocked me.” He stepped away, pushing his bangs back, and took a lap around the table before sitting again. Shaking his head, he took a deep breath and cradled her arm in his hand again. He reached for the tweezers he’d dropped.

Astrid made a noise that sounded absurdly like a laugh. When he looked up, she was smiling, and it was devastating. 

Ever since the first time he’d seen that video of her in a gymnastics leotard and sweatpants, he’d been working towards that smile. He watched that smile when he was frustrated, when he was stumped, when he was sick of the paperwork and the team of doctors he was forced to cooperate with. And he hadn’t gotten to see it at the hospital when she’d rebooted. He was beginning to think he never would. 

But she was smiling at him, and his heart did some sort of ungraceful somersault. Her lips curled at the edges, and mischief twinkled in her blue eyes. And then she whispered, “You were thinking about sex, weren’t you?”

Hiccup choked on his denial, nearly tearing out part of her arm. “No! Of course not!”

“I had a question about that,” she continued, as if he hadn’t even spoken. “They say you built me. Does that include… y’know. Everything?”

He was on his feet again, pacing away from her and the table. “Y-yes, your body was rebuilt based on moldings, photos, bone structure, and other various resources.”

“So you made a mold of my… area?” She wouldn’t stop smiling, even if her own cheeks were as pink as his felt. His ears burned. 

“No, that— that was done by a female plastic surgeon on our team.” Oh gods, what was he even supposed to do in this situation? This entire conversation was inappropriate and toeing so many ethical lines, but there was no fancy doctor code for what you’re supposed to do when your beautiful cyborg patient starts asking questions about her new vagina. “I just recreated the mold using assorted synthetic flesh materials and— and installed it.”

Astrid’s head fell back as she laughed. She seemed to find hilarity in his discomfort. He wondered if he should call his boss or a lab assistant. 

“What about my boobs? You built my boobs?”

“…Yes.”

Another unladylike cackle. She kicked her feet, pressing her one hand against her diaphragm and laughing until her shoulders were shaking through silence. Hiccup wondered absently if her tear ducts would respond to laughter. That wasn’t something he’d thought to program them to do. 

“I’m sorry,” she tried to say through giggles, though she seemed anything but. “None of this is really funny at all. It’s actually completely weird and creepy—” Astrid dissolved again, unable to finish her sentence. 

Hiccup stood baffled and began wondering if she was having some sort of breakdown. 

She tried again. “I’m only laughing cause you’re like this sixteen year old nerd engineer and you know more about my vagina than I do.”

Hiccup scratched at his temple. “I’ll be eighteen in April.”

“Oh, that makes it better,” she snorted, and he couldn’t be sure if she was using sarcasm or not. Her right arm was still open on the table, looking so strange next to this girl who seemed very human and very real. “Seriously, though, can I still have sex? Will my whole _set-up_ still do that?”

There was calm and collected composure he was supposed to have for these questions. He wasn’t supposed to look everywhere but at her, rubbing his neck and mumbling, “All your sexual functions should be in tact. Your reproductive system is basically null, but your body should respond to sexual arousal and stimulation the same as anybody else’s.”

He thought she’d lose it again, break into another fit of amusement. But his words seemed to have some sort of sobering effect. She stilled, her smile slowly dropping into something small and almost sad. Astrid searched his face, sincerity fading with every steadying breath she took. “I was too embarrassed to ask my parents.”

“They probably wouldn’t have known for sure,” he replied with a slight shrug. He wanted his white coat. That was what was missing. In his fancy lab coat, he could pretend he wasn’t affected by this girl whose life was irrevocably changed because of him. Without it, he was a teenage guy in a cat-fur-covered t-shirt and jeans. 

The smile stuck to her mouth, as if she was afraid to lose it, but her gaze fell to the floor at his feet. Her eyes looked wet. “I don’t understand this body. At all.”

Hiccup parted his lips to ask her to elaborate, to ask her what he needed to explain. Was it the neural system— her brain and how it was interpreting the various sensors in her pseudoskin? Or her circulatory system, now that it was limited to her torso and head? Or— please gods no— was she concerned about her sex organs? But she went on before he could ask. 

“Why do I even _have_ this body? It’s not really mine.” She shook her head, glancing aside at her arm. “It’s not… _me_.”

“It is you,” Hiccup told her, slowly moving back towards his stool. 

“I don’t even know what _me_ is anymore.” Lifting her arm off the table, she held it out so he could see. “Synecdoche, y’know. Is the whole a series of parts or can a part of the whole be the thing itself?”

He had to scour his memories of high school for that particular English lesson. “Er. You lost me.”

Astrid looked up. “Am I my arm?”

“No.”

“Is my arm me?” She lifted a brow at him.

Hiccup hesitated. “It’s a part of you.”

“What makes it a part of me?”

“It’s attached to you?” 

She nodded, as if acknowledging his words. Then she took a clamp from his tray of tools and attached it to the end of her wrist where her hand used to be. He flinched, wary of the electric circuits that might not bode well with the unfamiliar metal, but he didn’t say anything. “What about now? This thing’s attached to me. Is it a part of me?”

Hiccup could only stare, open-mouthed and uncertain. 

“And if I’m the sum of my parts, then what happens when all my parts are decomposing in some science lab?” Wetting her lips, she swallowed hard. “If you take out the pieces of me one by one, how do you know when something stops being me? When do I stop being a person and start being a bunch of bones and organs? Is it my brain? Am I my thoughts? But you messed with my brain too, so how do I even know that the thoughts that I’m having are mine?”

A tear escaped her lower lashes, racing down her cheek, and she looked to the ceiling before brushing it away with the back of her hand. “Am I a person or a body? Am I a brain? What am I?”

Hiccup pushed himself onto his seat and reached forward to press his hands into her shoulders. “You’re a cyborg, Astrid. You’re a human with mechanized body modifications.” She sniffed, and he gave her a gentle little shake. “You’ve got a little more machine than tissue, but you’re the same person you’ve been your whole life. You’re a consciousness. A sentience.”

“I’m a monster,” she whispered.

He furrowed his brow. “Hey, that’s not nice.” 

Hiccup pulled back, lifting his left leg over his right and slipping off his shoe. Then he pulled off his sock and tugged his jeans up until she could see his leg. Giving his calf a twist, he felt a pinch as his pseudoskin prosthesis detached and came off in his hand. 

He gave her a nervous kind of grin. “If you’re a monster, I’m a monster.”


	3. File C

**File C**

**-**

When she leans in and kisses him, all she can wonder is how the pseudoskin of her lips tastes. If her mouth gives the way it’s supposed to against his. Whether her mechanical heart is racing because she’s nervous or if she’s nervous because her mechanical heart beats so quickly. Hiccup smells like motor oil and deodorant, and he’s warm, but he takes her by the arms and gently presses her away.

“Uh—” he exhales, staring at the floor between them instead of at her. Astrid feels cold regret freeze in her gut, feels shame heat her cheeks. “This… no. I’m your doctor, Astrid, there are laws about this.”

Disappointment cuts her through, and she shrugs her shoulders out of his grip. “You’re not my doctor,” she denies, setting her chin a little and lifting her hand for him to see. Without a pseudoskin glove, the metal joints and fingers look scarily robotic. She needs to feel human. She needs to feel real. “You’re my cybernetics engineer.”

Hiccup paces to the other side of his desk and runs his fingers through his hair. “It’s the same thing, Astrid—”

“It’s not!” She closes the space between them again, though she doesn’t try touching him. “If you were fixing my car, not my hand, would you have any ethical qualms about that?”

“You’re not a car!” He gestures up and down. “You are a— a girl— a _minor_ who’s been placed under my care.”

“I might as well be a car if I can’t do what I want with this body.” Shaking her head, she balls her hands into fists. One makes metallic clinkings. “Would it matter, Hiccup?”

His gaze flicks to her for just a moment before dropping again. Almost an indulgence. “You’re going through a rough time. You’re looking for comfort in somebody else.”

“Yes,” she retorts honestly, “The only person who knows how all my pieces fit together. Knows exactly _what_ I am. What’s so wrong about that?”

“I don’t look at you like that!” he blurts, and his words hit her square in the chest. Hiccup grabs a handful of papers and x-rays from his desk. “This— That’s what you are to me. A patient, a job.” He tosses the files back with a sharp sigh. “You’re amazing. Beautiful and soft-hearted and brave, but I can’t pretend you’re not—”

“A machine?” she interrupts quietly. Not for the first time, she’s baffled by the way she can feel very real pains in a body made of metal and tubes. How does her neural system know to recreate such a terrible and stabbing ache?

His face drops. “Yes.” Then his features screw up again, and he growls with frustration. “I mean, no. _Yes_ , I can’t forget you’re a machine, but that’s because I built you! Because I was _hired_ to _build_ you. I’m a cybernetics prosthetist.”

“I get it,” she whispers, feeling her throat thicken with the onset of tears. Not tears, really. A saline solution. The tightening sensation is just another trick of Hiccup’s brilliant engineering. “I’m a prosthesis.”

Astrid blinks, unable to keep his pitying gaze. Turning on her heel, she bites out a quick apology and starts for the door. Footsteps follow after her, and then he’s grabbing her elbow. 

“I know prostheses,” he says lowly, but she won’t turn her face back to him. “They’re substitutes. Fill ins.” His hand tightens, pulling her back. “At the end of the day, you take them off and try not to think about the pains your real foot left behind.”

She tugs at her arm, embarrassed. She wants the floor to swallow her whole. Wants to suddenly short circuit and turn into a pile of spare parts. Hiccup gives her arm a stronger tug, and she crashes into his chest. She opens her mouth to lash out at him, but when she looks up at him, his eyes don’t seem so full of pity anymore. 

“I build fake things that feel real,” he murmurs. “Your arms, your legs, your skin—” His thumb brushes across her inner elbow. “Fake. But you— your smile and your wit and the way you feel— those are all real. _Those_ are the things I want and _those_ are the things I can’t have.”

Astrid can feel his heart pounding through his shirt, and she exhales in surprise. “It’s just the ethics?” she asks, her voice small. “It’s not because you’re not… attracted to me?”

Hiccup makes a noise caught between a groan and a scoff. He unhands her, tearing off his white lab coat and letting it fall to the floor. Then he takes her face between his palms and lowers his mouth to hers. 

She doesn’t think about whether or not she tastes or feels strange. She doesn’t worry about whether or not her synthetic skin is too plasticky or smooth, or whether the shaking breath she inhales through parted lips is even necessary. She thinks about how warm his calloused hands are on her face, how threads of excitement are running through her. 

Her fingers reach hesitantly for his sides, pull him just a little closer. She wants to feel that beating heart thudding against her chest. He’s real. He’s honest. For the first time, he’s touching her without the intent of fixing her. He’s not touching her body, he’s touching _her_.

And that makes all the difference.


	4. File D

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW Warning

**File D**

**-**

It should have been a bad night.

The way she’d described her party, Hiccup was expecting a few awkward homeschooled teenagers gathered around a punch bowl while parents chaperoned nearby. He’d never been to a dance or a prom before, but this event seemed more like that than any dinner he’d seen on television. 

“Do you hear that?” she kept asking with a frown, pressing her fingertips into her ears and looking around the ballroom. It was really a ridiculous question, because there was absolutely nothing to be heard over the blaring music and the shouting of various gorgeous gymnasts dancing and laughing around them.

He shook his head apologetically, giving her a helpless shrug. She seemed as miserable as she’d predicted she’d be. It was supposed to be a party to celebrate the end of the gymnastics competition season, hosted by her team’s coach. But he knew she felt out of place after having to end her season short because of her accident. This would be her last time with all of her friends together like this, and she kept scowling and dragging him to corners to lurk. 

Her old teammates seemed to be trying with her, one or two occasionally flouncing over in their formal dresses to ask about Hiccup and gently pry for information about her recovery. Astrid would force a smile and explain that he was her cybernetics engineer and friend, and then they’d ask more questions than she was comfortable with before she excused herself none too politely. 

“You _seriously_ don’t hear that screeching?” she asked again several minutes later, brow furrowed with frustration and distress. Her eyes– done up with glittering make-up that made her lashes look impossibly thick– reflected the approaching limit to her patience. 

“Just the music,” he replied. Then he gently took her arm and pulled her closer so he could press his ear against hers. After a few moments of feeling his heart race and smelling the perfume on her skin and the product in her hair, a sharp squeal crackled at him, and he flinched away. “Oh. Yeah. Sounds like your audio receptors are getting feedback from the speakers or something.”

Her face fell. “Can you fix it?”

Hiccup stammered, trying to think of a way to ease her misery. His hand wandered to rub his thumb over her earlobe, but it was more of a gesture of comfort than an actual inspection. “I– I can’t. All I can do is turn them off, but then you won’t be able to hear a thing.”

Astrid huffed and cut her gaze away to the throng of party-goers laughing on the dance floor. He’d offered to subject her to his pathetic dancing skills in an attempt to make her happy, but she’d turned him down and stared longingly at her friends. She mumbled something too low for him to make out over the throbbing bass. 

He leaned in so that her mouth was near his ear. “What’d you say?”

“Let’s just go back to the lab,” she repeated. There was defeat in her voice. “This sucks.”

So after waiting for her to give her now ex-coach her apologies, he guided her away from the staring crowds and the blaring music and the life she used to have. She held her chin up as they stepped out of the hotel and walked silently to his bike, but he’d swear the back of his sport coat was damp with tears when they reached the office building. 

Now she’s wandering around his lab in a glittery gold dress, heels clicking on the tile as she paces in front of his bulletin board. It’s collaged with notes, sketches, reports, and several pictures of her cybermechanic body in various states of dismemberment. He’s only turned on a couple of lamps, not wanting anyone who happens to be working late to know he’s in his office. The light winks off of the sequins sewn in her tulle skirt and refracts the occasional rainbow off of her necklace. 

He can’t help but watch her. Sitting on the edge of his desk with his hands shoved in his pockets, he follows her graceful movements and listens to the almost inaudible whir of her mechanical frame. 

“I kind of already knew it would be like that,” she sighs, pausing in front of a diagram of her brain and the few attachments they’d implanted. “That’s how all the meets were. I was only on the team by formality.”

“It won’t be like this forever,” he tries to assure her, but even he isn’t so certain anymore. With every day, the quirks and oddities of her body provide another challenge. “You’ll find new things to distract you. New friends to hang out with.”

“You don’t have many friends in this sport,” she tells him wryly, glancing over her bare shoulder at him. “You’ve got competition.”

Hiccup shrugs and rubs his jaw against his shoulder to scratch the itch of stubble. “That’ll just mean the friends you do make will be even better.”

Astrid snorts, but when she turns and walks towards him, she’s smiling. Her hands play with her fluffy dress, fingertips skimming the sparkling hem. “Maybe you can build me some friends,” she suggests with her eyes on the ground. “Or at least one robot who can appreciate Hemsworth brothers movie marathons and eating pints of Ben&Jerry’s in one sitting.”

He grins and shakes his head. “You know I know absolutely nothing about artificial intelligence, right?”

She pauses a couple feet from him, folding her arms in front of her. “C’mon, you built me. How hard could it be to whip up someone for me to hang out with?”

Slipping a hand out of his pocket, he leans forward and taps her forehead. “I don’t do brains,” he reminds her with a raised brow. He summons a haughty tone. “I may be a cybernetics prodigy and one of the most famous scientists currently working for the government, but.” Her bangs tickle his finger, and he brushes them back. “I’m just the prosthesis guy. I can’t build a person that doesn’t already exist.”

Astrid takes a step closer, pulling his hand away but not letting go. Her skirt brushes his legs and makes a rustling crinkle. “Then use your prestigious connections to find me someone who can.”

He looks up, meeting her gaze. “Is a robot pal really what you want?”

She shakes her head, dangling earrings tangling in her curls.

“What do you want?” His question is barely louder than a whisper. 

Glancing down, she lifts his hand back to her face and leans her cheek into his palm. Then she looks up through her long lashes at him. “I want to feel normal again.”

A sharp lancing pain twists through his chest. Hiccup tries not to think about the softness of her skin, tilting his head just slightly to examine the way the shadows are painted across her features. “I’m trying, Astrid. I’m trying to make it better.”

The tip of her pink tongue ghosts across her bottom lip for just a second. She turns into his palm and presses a kiss to the curve between his thumb and forefinger. “I already told you what would make it better.”

“I– I can’t,” he breathes, even as he remembers the strangely sweet taste of her mouth against his. How soft and warm and velvety smooth she felt. “I’m your engineer.”

“You’re more than that,” she insists. She flattens his hand just above her breasts so he can feel the steady beat of her heart. “You say you’re just the prosthetics guy, but you keep me together with more than screws and skin.” When she steps closer, he unconsciously parts his legs wider to accommodate her. His own heart starts to pound, feeling her so close. “You know exactly what I’m made of, but you’re the only one who sees past the metal.”

Her face draws near, and he can feel her nervous breaths against his cheekbone. For just a second, he lets his gaze drop to her lips, imagines the pleasure of them molded against his. “It’s just my job,” he lies, dizzy on the scent of her. “I fix people. It’s what I do.”

“Then fix me,” she whispers, sliding his hand lower. Lower. 

Hiccup swallows and closes his eyes, trying to gather his wits. The feeling of bejeweled fabric beneath his fingertips distracts him, paints an image of her curves in his mind. All he can think about is the body he built, the body he knows as well as his own. It’s not right that he can feel the dress’ boning and know where her waist curves in, where her ribs give way to the swell of her breasts. It’s privileged knowledge he was never supposed to take pleasure in. It’s unethical, unprofessional. It’s torture.

When he tilts his jaw upwards, her mouth is already waiting to meet his. His other hand rises to rest on the small of her back, and she laces her fingers together behind his neck. The sounds of their shaking exhales, their soft kissing are the only noises in the quiet lab. A tiny moan escapes her, and he tightens his grip on her. 

“You’re so real, Hiccup.” She leans in so that she’s pressed into his chest, and he thinks about carefully sculpting the flesh molding against him. “So real and compassionate and good.”

He doesn’t _feel_ good. He feels like scum, scraping his hand over her side and feeling the curve of her breasts. He knows every inch of her bare skin, and the warmth of her between his thighs is making him imagine all sorts of lewd scenes.

She begins pushing his coat off his shoulders, and though he freezes at first, he lets her. He has to concentrate. Has to think about something other than the pseudoskin hiding beneath her dress. He forces himself to remember that video on his phone. The sweaty girl in sweats and a leotard fanning herself and smiling. She was supposed to be a patient. An experiment. A project. He’s not supposed to be so addicted to the slick feel of her tongue sliding against his, the not-quite-natural taste of her. He’s not supposed to want her as badly as he does, but he might have wanted her since the first time he saw that video and heard her laugh. 

Her hands wander down his sides, pause at his sides. Then she hesitatingly reaches lower, brushes her fingertips across the front of his pants. Hiccup exhales harshly, grabs her wrist but doesn’t drag her away. He knows she’s shier than she’s trying to appear– she buries her face in his neck and kisses a path up his throat as she searches out the shape of him straining against the fabric. But even though he somehow knows she’s unsure of herself, she doesn’t pull away or give up. Her trembling hand finds his growing arousal and slides up and down the blistering swell. 

“Astrid,” he pants, eyes squeezed shut. “You don’t…” He needs to find the right words, needs to tell her they shouldn’t. But he wants to, so badly, and he’s never had a girl so beautiful touch him like this. 

As if in an attempt to dissuade him from protesting, she takes his own hand and places it on her inner thigh. The skin is so soft there, and he knows exactly what the slope of flesh leads to. She keeps stroking him, curling her palm against the hard ridge at his groin, and despite all his better judgement, his fingers twitch higher beneath her skirt. When he just barely brushes the fabric at her apex, she inhales sharply and presses her hips forward.

The hook of his dress pants makes a metallic click when she slips it open. Every little noise sounds so loud against the quiet hum of computers. Her mouth drags over his jaw, and she tugs at the zipper until she can slip her fingers inside. The stiff wool is too restricting– she scoffs a little in frustration. Then she gives up, tugging at his arms and pulling him away from the desk. For a moment, every fiber of his hot-blooded male body protests at her missing touch, but then she twists so that _she’s_ sitting on the edge and _he’s_ being pulled between her open thighs. His waistband falls aside easily now, and she tugs until she can reach for him inside his underwear. 

All sense of right and wrong dissolves when he feels her cool hand around his hot skin. His groan is low and hoarse. In the lamplight, he watches her blush, and he captures her lips so he can lick away the indents that her teeth are leaving behind.

She’s clumsy and uncertain, but even if he can do it himself, it’s _so_ much better when she does it. Astrid squeezes and strokes and moans at his mouth on her neck. Before he can think about it, his hands are lost beneath the gold tulle, and he’s peeling away the silky panties underneath. He knows this part of her too. Sculpted and installed it himself. He carefully programmed her neural receptors to respond to this place in the most unique way. That’s why he doesn’t have to fumble like he would with any other girl. Doesn’t have to cough nervously and explore the slick flesh warming his fingers. She hisses and whimpers as he recalls the sight of the perfection he’s finally touching months later. 

Even with his thoughts scrambled by pleasure and desire, he’s thinking through every movement. Taking note of how she responds, observing the varying temperatures of her mouth, her shoulders, her wet heat. He circles a spot he knows is good to touch and wonders if this semi-synthetic lubricant is comfortable for her. The scientist in him wants to explore and experiment, to discover what makes her arch and gasp and record all her reactions. But the eighteen year old guy in him wants to forget the data and bury himself into that warmth.

It’s what she wants, too. She doesn’t say it so much as she tightens her legs around his waist to pull him closer, rubs the head of him against her slippery center. Hiccup swears, gripping her thighs, and he almost pauses to ask about a condom before he remembers himself and sighs with relief against her temple. When she tilts her hips higher and nudges him lower, he feels her gently guiding him inside. Her jaw goes slack, and he pants raggedly into her bangs. 

It takes him back to the afternoon she came to his lab for the first time.. When he began to repair her and she’d murmured with awe that he was inside her. Back then, just the thought of it had made him blush and cringe. Now she’s bowing her back, impaling herself further on his length and shivering. 

He bears his weight against her, and paperwork flutters to the ground. Leaning his elbows against the desk and tangling his fingers in her hair, he slowly allows himself to rock in and out of her tight heat. “Is this okay?” he whispers, leaning his forehead against her shoulder and wetting his lips. “Does this feel good? Is your body responding correctly?”

“It’s perfect,” she murmurs, “You feel perfect.”

Distantly, he remembers that she wants to forget, wants to feel normal. His questions won’t help that. So instead, he licks and nibbles at her collarbone, feels her fluffy skirt crushed between them. “You’re beautiful. I’ve always thought you were beautiful.” 

Her nails rake over his scalp, and he sinks deep inside her. The desk doesn’t scrape or creak under them, but his hands keep slipping on reports, diagnostics, inquiry letters and blueprints. He brushes piles away, some curling through the air before sliding across the floor. One arm wraps around her waist and pulls her closer while the other supports his weight against the desktop. He’ll have a mess to clean up when they’re done, but right now all he can think about is the desperate, twisting girl beneath him. 

This is terrible and wrong in more ways than he can count, but she’s holding onto him like she’s afraid to let go. Her mouth is parted, a faint smile curling at the corners of her lips when she pants or says his name. She rises up to meet him when she can, and her heels dig into the small of his back when she can’t. For a little while, she’s not his patient in a hospital bed, and he’s not her glorified mechanic. They’re teenagers with more heat than blood in their veins, learning each other for the first time. It’s clumsy and a bad idea, and he finishes all too soon. But it’s normal, and for the night, he doesn’t have to be the prodigy or the cybernetics expert or anything but himself. And she’s trembling like a girl who’s gotten caught up in the moment and maybe made a mistake but can’t help but laugh shakily into his hair. 

And that’s normal.


	5. File E (Warning: Virus Detected)

**File E (Warning: Virus Detected)**

**-**

She could swear her heart stopped beating when her mother gave her the news at breakfast. Which was impossible, of course, because Hiccup had built a perfect circulatory system and a perfect pseudo-heart to go with it. But still, she was certain it stopped for a full minute when her mom gave her a tight smile and reached across the table for her hand. 

“He’s missing,” she’d said. Astrid was still replaying the words in her head, staring at her mother like there was something wrong with her ears. Maybe they’d short circuited. Maybe she’d caught some feedback– that happened sometimes if she stood too close to certain electronics. 

“Missing.” Astrid repeated the word slowly, feeling it roll around on her tongue like a jawbreaker. The kind that she got from the candy store when she was on vacation as a kid– the white splattered ones that were almost too big to suck on. She felt like she might choke on it if she made a wrong move. 

Somehow she’d known it was bad news when she came downstairs and found her mother in the kitchen. Her mom never left for work so late, so finding her leaning against the counter stirring sugar into a mug was already odd. But it was the tension in the air, the way her mom gently asked her to take a seat. And when she said Hiccup’s name– that’s when the malfunction with her heart must have happened.

Her mom’s thumb rubbed across her hand, and she took a sip of her coffee before continuing. Her long pause before speaking was telling. “His father called the hospital when he didn’t come home. He wasn’t answering his phone. They ran the security tapes for the parking garage, and Hiccup drove to work Tuesday morning. His bike is still there. And there’s footage missing from the hallway outside his office.”

Static. Was it really there in her head or was she imagining it?

“So… what?” It was a struggle to keep her voice even. “They think what? He– he skipped town without telling anybody? He’s in trouble?” Her mom winced, and Astrid realized she’d begun squeezing her hand too tightly. She sat back, pressing her palms flat to the tabletop and spreading her fingers slowly. “Did they call the police?”

“Yes… Honey, I’m sorry.” Her mom scooted her chair closer, and she reached over to brush a lock of hair behind her daughter’s ear. Astrid resisted the urge to pull away. “I know you really like him.”

 _Like him_. That was one way of putting it. To her parents and the hospital, he was just her prosthetist. Her doctor. She saw him when she tore her soft silicone skin or lost feeling in her feet. 

But he was _so_ much more. Astrid perfect memory tortured her with images of his smile whenever she showed up at his office. His smell when he stood close, showing her sketches of his latest ideas for her equipment. The feel of his hands tracing her spine the night of the party. The night she felt _human_ for the first time in months.

 _He_ made her feel human. Not the fake skin or the miniscule nerve receptors he embedded in it– _him_.

And he’d disappeared.

“I have to–” Astrid shook her head, standing. “I have to go. I have to talk to the cops.”

Her mom’s brow creased with worry. She blinked up at her. “Honey, there’s nothing we can do. The hospital only called to tell us that they would get you set up with Dr. Havish for the time being. They didn’t want to give me any details, but I called Dr. Havish and asked because I knew you’d want to know.”

Irritation flared in her chest, hot and quick. She took a step forward. “You don’t understand, Mom. I was _there_ Tuesday night. I was with him that night.”

She watched the change come over her mother’s features, slowly but surely. Confusion and pity drained from her expression, leaving suspicion behind. Her mouth pressed into a thin line, her jaw tightening. 

“You didn’t say anything about seeing Dr. Haddock this week.” Her words were soft and clipped. It didn’t slip Astrid’s notice that he’d gone from _Hiccup_ to _Dr. Haddock._

Astrid squeezed her eyes shut and stepped back, growling with frustration and reluctance. “Does that matter right now?” Her mother’s eyes dug into her as she raked a hand through her hair. “He’s missing and I might have been the last person to see him.”

It was obvious that her mom didn’t consider the conversation to be over, but Astrid had stormed up the stairs and dressed before she could protest. She had to go– the police station? The hospital? She wasn’t sure which would be more prudent. 

It’d been no wonder now, why Hiccup hadn’t answered her last couple of phone calls. She’d been a little annoyed, thinking he’d been ignoring her. But now she felt guilty for being perturbed. Worry wrung her like a pair of fists. 

She thought about Tuesday evening as she shoved her feet into her boots and yanked at the laces. They’d joked and chatted a lot, watching a movie on his laptop and catching up over chinese takeout. His kisses tasted like pepper and schezwan sauce when she crawled onto his lap and surrounded his face with a curtain of blonde hair. She remembered that they froze when someone knocked and tried the doorknob, but they’d thought ahead to lock it. They’d laughed so hard after the footsteps disappeared down the hallway, whispering about how close they’d been to being caught.

Inside her chest, her mechanical heart banged painfully. 

Now she wondered who was behind the door. Who’d been trying to visit Hiccup so late in the evening. In the couple of inches of window not covered by blinds at the very bottom, she remembered seeing a sharp black suit and a shiny gold watch on a man’s wrist.. A doctor, looking for advice from the cybernetics expert? Or someone more sinister?

What exactly happened after she left that night?


End file.
